Life or Debt
by Iridian's Legacy
Summary: Never play board games with a demon...or do, why not?


**[AN]: One-shot request from tumblr. "Bill, Dipper, and Mabel hanging out & causing shenanigans."**

 **Enjoy! (:**

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Hands shoved deep into his pockets, Dipper was more than content to stay in the doorway of the attic and watch the madness unfold. He wanted nothing to do with this; the whole thing was crazy.

This sacred place was being desecrated by that thing's mere presence. It didn't belong. It had caused so much pain, fighting, and division. It drove men mad. And it was sitting in the middle of the room. _His_ room. _Their_ room.

Mabel blew a raspberry from where she knelt. "Come on, Dipper. Quit being such a grump!"

"Yeah!" Bill joined in. " _Necronomiconopoly_ can't be that bad, can it?" The demon hovered over Mabel's shoulder before drifting to his designated spot at the board. Mabel sat comfortably in a pink sparkling bean bag while he floated above his own, legs crossed, eye smugly squinted at his opponent.

Dipper glared at the dusty game, laid out and ready to be engaged. "I vowed never to play again, Mabel. Not after…"

Mabel laughed. "You're so dramatic! It was just one bad game with Grunkle Stan." She turned to Bill, hand up to shield her comments from her brother. "He's just bitter because Stan bought every graveyard on the board _and_ set up temples on half of them. Put Dipper 6 feet under in debt."

"I can hear you."

"He can't hear me. So you've never played anything like this before?" Mabel asked.

Bill took a moment to think, fiddling with his bowtie. "The closest thing I've come across outside of this dimension, I'd say, would be the annual Massacre of the Multitudes. Basically, a bunch of interdimensional warlords compete for the highest carnage count and the winner is awarded their own empire and decides the fates of the losers." He let out a sharp, high-pitched laughed. "Concessions are horrible, but you can't argue with the entertainment value!"

"Hey! We've done something like that! Globnar, Dipper, remember?"

"We've literally never done anything like that. Nothing even close," he groaned, rubbing his eyes. "You two go ahead and play, though. I'm gonna to go see if Stan needs any help with the Summerween shopping or something."

Before Dipper had a chance to even turn around, Mabel leapt from her seat and caught her brother by the arm. "Grunkle Stan is fine! He knows how to battle for watermelons at the store!" She yanked him back into the room and led him, nearly tripping over his own feet, to the empty beanbag. "It'll be fun! Trust me."

"How exactly do you play?" Bill said. He pointed to a small game piece that resembled a tiny grim reaper. "And can I be that?"

"You can be whatever you want," Dipper started. His slumped in his seat, still opposed to the idea of playing, but his sister's joy leapt when he jumped to explain the rules. "So long as you let Mabel be the Kraken. She always has to be the Kraken."

Mabel picked up the tentacled pawn and held it to her cheek, whispering compassionately, "It's just misunderstood…"

Bill rolled his eye. "So I'm guessing there's a monetary system here, too?" He picked up a blue marble from the game's treasure chest and peered through it.

"The blue ones are normal souls, and the red ones are the souls of kings," Dipper continued. "Five blues make one red; five red make one yellow; five yellow make a little under 3 and a third purple - ow!" A marble colliding with his nose silenced the rundown.

"They also make surprisingly great weapons," Mabel giggled, readying another.

"And you roll the dice to forge your path around the board. Seems simple enough!" The grim reaper pawn glowed blue as Bill directed it to the START square with a simple finger motion. "Let's get this party started!"

Grinning, Dipper shook his head. "Not so fast, Bill. You may be used to interdimensional gladiatorial combat and board games, but this is an _earth_ game. A dimension 46'\ game. It requires cunning, and thorough knowledge of earth economics and statistics." With wiggling fingers, he prudently surveyed his potential pieces, and deliberately selecting a falconesque figure, he held it at eye-level between his his thumb and first finger. "I'm just worried that your barbaric tendencies will be too...intense for the intellectual skirmish that is _Necronomiconopoly_."

Mabel snatched the ebony dice up before Bill had a chance to respond to Dipper's jab. "Put your big words away, bro, and let's play!" She hurled the wooden pieces across the board and the game began.

* * *

An avalanche of groceries spilled out onto the kitchen table. Apples and loose candy corn tumbled from their paper bags and onto the dusty - _filthy_ \- wood floor. Stan picked up his feet to at least keep the produce from grazing his shoes, though a handful of candy corn crushed beneath his heels when he set them back down. He breathed a blubbering noise through his lips but set to gathering up the mess.

"Every year I nearly maim myself or the neighbors fighting for Summerween supplies," he grumbled to himself. "Every year I make an absolute mess of the place, trying to get it as spooky as I can to scare the pants off some kids." On hands and knees now, he swept bruised bruised apples back in their bag. One had rolled under the table. Stan ducked and crawled for it. "And every single year, I tell myself that I ain't doing another year of it, because one day, it's gonna kill-"

" _No!_ "

He jumped and banged his fez-less head on the table with a more than audible _thump_. Tubes of ghostly makeup and wads of fake spider webs rained down from all sides while the horrified screams from upstairs continued.

" _No! Stop!"_

Stan immediately recognized the voice. His eyes grew wide. "Dipper!"

He shuffled backwards out from under the table, crushing still more candy corn in the process, and leapt to his feet. His cane stood leaning by the doorway, and he took it up as he sped past. "Kids!" he called, practically sprinting up the stairs. "I'm coming!"

Turning the corner, he was met by smoke and fog pouring down the attic staircase. The worst came to mind - poison, fire, black magic. Stan unfurled the handkerchief in his jacket pocket to cover his mouth and nose, and, taking a deep breath, charged up the stairs like a fireman rushes an inferno. He could hardly see where he was going; the light from the attic window could not pierce the thickness of the haze. Blindly, Stan groped the walls for a doorknob until - aha!

" _Mabel, help!"_

"I'm coming, kids!" Stan called before bursting into the room.

He felt like he'd just stepped into some creepy goth convention. For one thing, the walls and floor were no longer splintering wood, but medieval stone arranged in triangular patterns from the doorway all the way up to the point in the ceiling. A black iron chandelier had replaced the single lightbulb, and was doing a better job at illuminating the room, too. The only normal things remaining were the beds and the kids' knicknacks littering the floor, but piles of strange loot marked off three separate sections of the room - Dipper's side, Mabel's side, and the mountain of blinding color in the middle. Bill perched at the top of his pile of different colored spheres, indubitably keeping the kaleidoscopic sculpture stable with magic or whatever hoodoo he used to get things done.

Mabel jumped on her bed, clasped fists held high above her head. She shook them hard, as if in a celebration, but when she released, two glowing dice were cast to the floor where a wooden gameboard disgorged fog and minor bursts of electricity. Tiny game pieces cheered and hollered at the roll, and something like a metal octopus pulled itself across five spaces, past miniature temples and tombstones complete with epitaphs, to the starting square. A large gothic treasure chest opened its mouth, and a single red marble, beaming like a sun, drifted and dropped to a puddle of other marbles of all colors on Mabel's bed.

"Woohoo!" she cheered. "I've finally got enough for a temple! Dead Man's Valley, here I come!"

Across the room, Dipper had a look on his face that a man might wear if he had accidentally just tossed a winning lottery ticket instead of an old receipt into a roaring fire. He sat cross-legged, surrounded by small piles of marbles, expertly sorted by color and arranged into groups of five or less. His loot was noticeably sparser than everyone else's, and Bill made no attempt to hide that he was indescribably amused by the pinches of wealth Dipper held compared to his own kingly stock.

"Mabel! If you put a temple in Dead Man's Valley, I won't have any safe zones for the next two turns!" Dipper exclaimed. "I'll have to pay trespassing fees until I land on START and that will leave me with…" He consulted a pocket calculator in his lap. One could hear the gears in his head turning if you listened close enough " _Only twenty souls?!_ "

The grim reaper piece laughed from the board, jabbing at Dipper with his needle-sized scythe.

Bill chuckled atop his throne. "You can still make a deal with me, Pinetree! Trust me - I can afford it!"

"What in the heck is going on here?!" Stan hollered over the madness. He took a deep breath and choked on the smoke. It tasted like cotton candy and rotting flesh and burned his throat the more he coughed.

"Grunkle Stan! We're playing _Necronomiconopoly_ and Bill animated the game so the pieces and buildings and souls come to life and the smoke smells like candy and I'm doing so much better than last time! I might even talk to Robbie's parents about entering the undertaking business!" Mabel bounded toward her great uncle and took him by the hand, dragging him to the gameboard. She pulled his face down to give him a better look at the living magic that clearly delighted her.

Stan waved away a coil of candy smoke and squinted down at her tentacled pawn. It turned to him and bared hundreds of prong-like teeth. "Eugh…" he grimaced.

"Nice of you to join us, Fez!" Bill called. Stan turned his attention to the demon, who had just finished pouring himself a glass of some frothy silver drink. "I was worried you'd miss all the fun! You know, your niece really isn't that bad at this game. Wish I could say the same for the sweaty one over there!"

Dipper pulled at the tufts of hair sticking out from his cap, grinding his teeth, pleading, "Grunkle Stan! You've gotta help me! You know finance better than anyone; there's gotta be a way for me to make it out of this alive!"

Bill chuckled. "By even your own calculations, you know there isn't. A deal's still up for grabs, but tick tock!."

Stan nearly threw his back out scrambling up from the floor at the second mention of that word. He pointed a tremoring finger up at Bill. "No deals! Enough of this! You promised, ya filthy triangular-"

Mabel tugged at his sleeve. "He means a financial deal, Grunkle Stan. Dipper is about to owe a boatload of souls to either me or Bill unless he takes out a loan from the Nether."

The glowing dice lifted themselves from the ground and settled by Dipper's knee. "And I absolutely refuse! Not after last time," Dipper said, shuddering slightly.

Stan looked between his nephew and Bill, who contorted his single eye to look as though he were raising an eyebrow. He looked down at the living gameboard, the smoke curling over the sides, and the transformed attic. Other than things being blown entirely out of proportion and the just plain weirdness of watching a simple kids' game turn into a life-or-debt situation, there didn't seem to be any present danger…

"We can always add you in, Gramps!" said Bill. The dejected game pieces jumped for joy at the center of the board - a laughing skull, a tarot card, a transparent bottle of red liquid, and a piece of sequence Mabel had substituted for the lost priest. "I've heard you're sort of an expert at this game. I'd love to see your 'cunning and thorough knowledge of earth economics' in action!"

Stan grimaced. "Ah...no. Absolutely not, thank you. If you'll excuse me, I gotta get this place ready for Summerween tomorrow night. And, uh, mop the kitchen." He turned to go, thoroughly ready to get the heck out of there.

Mabel caught him by the hand. "Ooh! Maybe Bill can help with the decorating! He made all of this with just a snap of his fingers!"

Dipper hopped off his bed, disrupting his neat piles of glowing souls as the mattress shifted. "That would be so cool! I'd love to see those kids that always prank the Shack finally get their pants scared off!"

"Shooting Star is onto something." Bill graced the Pines family by descending from his throne and hovering over Mabel's right shoulder. "I could get this place looking kookier and more heartstopping than ever in just the blink of an eye!"

"That was horrible," Stan said flatly. "And thanks but no thanks. I always decorate the Shack, and I ain't letting you infect it with your weird nightmare magic any more than you already have."

"Pleeeeease Grunkle Stan?" Mabel pleaded, hopping up and down. Bill had to dodge the first couple of hops until he finally retreated to Dipper's side. "We promise we won't make a mess of the place! And we won't break any holes in the walls, and we won't touch your stuff, and Waddles can help, and it'll be so much fun, and we'll put everything back the way it was when we're done unless something is so cool that it just has to stay, and you can dress up as a werewolf or a vampire or a shark or a troll or-"

"Alright! Alright! You can play with the magic," Stan finally conceded, feeling a headache coming on. "But for the love of all, be safe, and don't destroy the Shack." He turned to Bill and narrowed his eyes. The demon mockingly narrowed his own in response. "I'm watching you, ya hear? Don't be trying anything."

Bill laughed playfully. "Oh, Fez, you'll know if I'm trying anything. You're a clever guy, and trust me, I'm way more interested in making sure your house isn't as lame as it was last year."

Dipper and Mabel both erupted in a chorus of "Ohhhs" and "Shots firrred!" Even the game pieces fell over and ran in circles with excitement.

"You just got _burned_!" Dipper howled.

"Dipper, word choice, please, and I'll have you know that I always have the scariest set up in all of Gravity Falls!" Stan puffed his chest proudly.

"Trust me. When we're done with the Shack, you will hardly recognize it." Bill winked slyly. Or maybe it was just a creepy blink…

"That does not comfort me in the slightest."

"Don't worry about it, Grunkle Stan!" Mabel shoved him toward the door. "It'll be amazing!"

Stan hollered over his shoulder, "Keep it clean, Bill! Nothing that's gonna get me arrested or anything!" The demon laughed but made no promises. Mabel offered one last thumbs up of assurance and a wide metal smile before slamming the door shut in her Grunkle's face. Stan pressed an ear to the door in time to hear Bill crow, "Time to turn this place inside out!"

His heart dropped like a stone into his stomach. His eyes rolled back into his head and he thumped his head on the doorframe, groaning. "Just...go clean up the kitchen. Don't worry about it. Just clean the kitchen and don't worry about that crazy-"

"Graaaaappling HOOK!" Mabel screamed before something shattered on the other side of the door.

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 **[AN]: I like writing humor! It gives me an opportunity to make a bunch of references in context and gives me practice with dialogue.**

 **Please leave an honest review and let me know what you think, what I can improve on, or any mistakes that may have snuck past me in the editing process. Every single one helps me get better and encourages me to keep writing!**

 **Also, Fanfiction doesn't seem to like hyphens very much (two in a row at least). If anyone knows how to combat that, send a message my way (:  
(Edit: "Fixed" it!)**

 **Read on!**

 **~~Iridian~~**


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